The present disclosure generally relates to semiconductor devices, and particularly to semiconductor structures having dual work function metal gates and a high-k gate dielectric, and methods of manufacturing the same.
High gate leakage current of silicon oxide and nitrided silicon dioxide as well as depletion effect of polysilicon gate electrodes limits the performance of conventional semiconductor oxide based gate electrodes. High performance devices for an equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) less than 1 nm require high dielectric constant (high-k) gate dielectrics and metal gate electrodes to limit the gate leakage current and provide high on-currents. Materials for high-k gate dielectrics include ZrO2, HfO2, other dielectric metal oxides, alloys thereof, and their silicate alloys.
In general, dual metal gate complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integration schemes employ two gate materials, one having a work function near the valence band edge of the semiconductor material in the channel and the other having a work function near the conduction band edge of the same semiconductor material. In CMOS devices having a silicon channel, a conductive material having a work function of 4.0 eV is necessary for n-type metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (NMOSFETs, or “NFETs”) and another conductive material having a work function of 5.0 eV is necessary for p-type metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (PMOSFETs, or “PFETs”). In conventional CMOS devices employing polysilicon gate materials, a heavily p-doped polysilicon gate and a heavily n-doped polysilicon gate are employed to address the needs. In CMOS devices employing high-k gate dielectric materials, two types of gate stacks comprising suitable materials satisfying the work function requirements are needed for the PFETs and for the NFETS, in which the gate stack for the PFETs provides a flat band voltage closer to the valence band edge of the material of the channel of the PFETs, and the gate stack for the NFETs provides a flat band voltage closer to the conduction band edge of the material of the channel of the NFETs. In other words, threshold voltages need to be optimized differently between the PFETs and the NFETs.
Manufacture of dual metal gate CMOS structures is difficult because two types of metal gate electrodes are needed to provide different work functions. Integration of dual gate CMOS structures with a replacement gate structure is even more difficult because of the difficulty in patterning different metal layers in replacement gate geometries.